When you have an established clientele, you don't need to make a lot of changes to keep them coming back. Diners come back for different reasons – habit, familiarity, proximity to work or home, or even – gasp! – the food. So changing things around can actually be a death wish.

With the long-running Toronto restaurant Cyrano's (more than fifty years in business), the space once looked like a poor man's version of a smoke lounge, but it had a very loyal, long-standing clientele. But when new owners took over, they made the executive decision to end that run, and rebrand the place as 73 Stirs. A risky decision indeed. Where Cyrano's was all dark wood and small booths, the updated look is lightened with white-wash walls and upholstery in shades of off-white leather with raised dots, something you're more accustomed to seeing on an It Bag swinging off the arm of a socialite on the Upper East Side in New York rather than something to sit on in a former steakhouse near St. Lawrence Market in downtown Toronto.

Where the chairs used to be straight-backed and brown, they are now white and curved, with silver flowers embroidered on the white upholstery. Even the lighting has changed – floor lamps used to be scattered throughout the restaurant; now silver-plated modern-looking lamps hang low from the ceiling.

The two new owners, manager Bill Tsiokos and chef Faruque Siddique, have introduced light where there used to be shadow – even the outside is painted white now, as if to welcome the sun. Tsiokos and Siddique go way back. Tsiokos first hired him when he used to manage the now-defunct Greek Tycoon (which became, later, Peter's Hall of Fame.) This isn't the first time, then, that Tsiokos has supervised a change of scenery. Their new ambition is to bring in the evening crowd.

Most of 73 Stirs business comes during the day – lunch crowds from nearby office buildings, presumably. So as you may have guessed, the menu has changed, with items that weren't here in the steakhouse days: two kinds of pasta (fettuccini with smoked salmon and penne rigate with grilled chicken) and an unusual pizza (topped with grilled Thai chicken, garlic, ginger, coriander, spiced peanut and bean sprouts – it makes me hungry just thinking about it) and Pad Thai (which frankly I would never eat in a place like this; the chairs are too white, and I'm too clumsy), and some more new items, as yet undecided (more salads, perhaps, or appetizers) coming up in a few weeks.